[This article is excerpted from "The Story of the Long Shadow"; Author: Wang Tingjun; Original title: "The First Criticism of the "Two Families"]
Fang Hua was born in Dalian in 1925 and studied at the Dalian Commercial School, and later was admitted to Man Ying as a recording assistant. In 1947, when Jinshan was preparing to make the movie "On the Songhua River" starring Zhang Ruifang, Wang Renlu, Pu Ke, etc., he saw Fang Hua sweeping the floor in the corridor of the studio, and his eyes left a deep impression on Jinshan, so he let him play the Japanese captain who played a lot of scenes.
This is the first time Fang Hua has stepped onto the screen. Subsequently, he played Japanese lower-ranking officers many times, such as Matsui in the 1955 version of the plains guerrilla, Yuhiro Ito, captain of the "Yoshino" in "Jia Wu Fengyun" in 1962, and Ono, the Japanese captain in "Sanjin Yamajo" in 1965, and so on. His performances were real and vivid, warmly welcomed by the audience, and he was known as the "King of Devils". However, Fang Hua preferred to play positive characters, he once wondered if his image was not like a good person, or because playing too many negative characters left too deep an impression on the audience and it was difficult to change, so he also went to Shanghai to ask Bai Yang and Zhang Ruifang to help contact and did rhinoplasty surgery, in order to leave a few good people on the screen.
Regardless of the negative character or the positive character, Fang Hua's drama is good, but his political career is not very smooth. In 1957, when he was "anti-rightist", Changying's great directors Sha Meng, Guo Wei, and Lu Ban were branded as "rightists", and in order to make up the proportional quota, actors Fang Hua and Chen Rubin were also branded as "rightists". Fang Hua's treatment was lowered from the seventh level of literature and art to the eleventh level, the salary was reduced from more than 140 yuan to more than 90 yuan, and the place where he lived was moved from the original technician building to the bungalow near the second dormitory. During the "Cultural Revolution", he was repeatedly criticized for starring in the "poisonous weed film" "Two Families", and his family was also criticized for this.
Although he was repeatedly treated unfairly, he was unexpectedly welcomed by the peasants when he was sent to the countryside to take the "May Seven Road". On the windowsill of his house, you can often see things sent by fellow villagers. The production team he was in, what difficulties he encountered could not be solved, as soon as he appeared, big things and small things were solved head-on...
Fang Hua's desire to play a good person has been somewhat satisfied in the film directed by Jiang Wen. He created the image of a high-ranking cadre of our army in "Sunny Day", there are not many scenes, but after all, he is an old cadre who has beaten devils. Unfortunately, before the film was released, he died of illness.